Define 'Puppy-Mill'  

What is considered a Puppy mill here is usually made up of barns usually holding 100 or more sets of mothers and litters. Many of these breeders over breed by many generations and continue on a strain until horrible deformities begin to appear in the dogs. We have a puppy mill reject. Her arteries are do distributed in the proper places she has extra nipples uneven jaw and back legs causing eating and walk/back/hip problems. These mills are horrible places that I hope you never have to see. Many leave dead puppies in the cages to fed on by the other dogs as well as the areas are not always cleaned well. There are also issues with steroids being used to make dogs such as Rottweilers bigger, it works but also results in ferocious dogs that need to be put down due to the steroids. They are horrible. Out here recently a mill was going to be investigated. The owner found out that inspectors where to come the next day and burnt down his barns with the animals inside. Over 120 beagles were found burned to death in those barns. It was horrible but has made our local governments take more notice of the situations.

My description of a puppy-mill matches entirely the one OpinionatedLady gave us. It's true that we can separate responsible from irresponsible breeders but, in my opinion puppy-mills are so extremely brutal, irresponsible and unethical that they do deserve a category of their own. And it is also important to discriminate what makes a breeder a responsible one, to that matter.

A responsible breeder:
- cares for the health of his animals
- carefully chooses only healthy animals to cross with his own
- provides the best conditions to his gestating or lactating females and their puppys
- respects the natural cycles of the female, only allowing her to become pregnant at the right time of year
- respects more the well being of his animals than his own profit.


These are just a few topics that a responsible breeder has to achieve, in my opinion. A breeder that, for instance, does not respect the natural cycles of the female, hormone stimulating her estrus and not allowing her to rest and gain weight between litters is, therefore, an irresponsible breeder. But only a puppy-mill owner submits his animals to such a great deal of pain and suffering, keeping them in overcrowded small compartments, non-sanitized and living on their own urine and feces, with no human contact whatsoever, until their shipped out to the window of some pet shop. That's my opinion on puppy-mills. Profit is the main objective, the rest is just dirty business.

I think that a puppy mill is a non-ethical breeder. For me these people don't deserve to be called "breeders" as "breeders" in my opinion, are people who breed honestly, and legitimately, taking care of the animals, and not exploiting them. A puppy mill is a place that exploits animals.

To me the word(s) puppy mill mean a place where dogs are kept only to have litter after litter of puppies for the monetary gain of the dog owners. These dogs are not pets, but tools used to make money. Often the dogs have so many litters of puppies that they are not producing healthy off-spring. I know a few people who do breed their dogs to make some money, but they only do it 2 or 3 times, not as a way to make a living. I think it is really sad that dogs are used in this manner & are not living in loving homes as a family member.

puppy mill was a substandard kennel where unhealthy, overbred dogs were kept in horrendous conditions.